Jonathan Mast talks about leveraging AI for Fence & Deck Business Growth | F&D Mastery Podcast #28

Jonathan Mast has been in digital marketing since selling his first website in 1995 and now runs White Beard Strategies, focused on helping businesses use AI and AI prompts to save time, increase margins, and deliver more value simultaneously.

Don't feel left behind — a recent study showed only about 13% of businesses actually use AI, so early adopters still have plenty of opportunity; today's AI is best understood as a vast, instantly-recalling encyclopedia, not the Terminator.

Most people have already used AI without realizing it — spell checkers, Grammarly, and phone GPS are all early forms — and chat interfaces like ChatGPT simply made it far easier to query.

AI needs context to perform: treat it like a coworker or assistant, because it's programmed to make assumptions and fill in blanks, so vague prompts produce vague results.

A standout use for contractors is generating SOPs — describe your concerns (muddy shoes, introducing themselves to the homeowner, cleaning up, not leaving tools) and ChatGPT drafts a 3-4 page procedure in 15-20 minutes instead of a full day.

You can feed AI a Loom video, its transcript, or even a phone audio recording (via ChatGPT's Whisper) — AI actually reads the transcript, not the video — so an estimator can narrate an inspection and get an instant checklist.

Jonathan's four-step 'perfect prompt framework': (1) tell it how to act/what role, (2) give background, (3) assign the specific task, and (4) the step everyone misses — give it permission to ask you clarifying questions before answering.

Start with ChatGPT's $20/month plan (images, voice, vision, custom GPTs) before Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity; and never publish raw AI output as website/SEO content — AI amplifies existing skill, so keep the human editing element.